A Winter Wimp

Well I survived a very Happy Friday The Thirteenth and enjoyed a Merry Christmas visitation all at once. My sister Suzanne and I visited for Christmas gift exchanges by both of us meeting at the Alton Community Center as it's now called.
I had worked all day to complete a quilted table runner for her and I was very pleased with it!

It is a bunch of primitively free motion quilted designs on a nicer quality bit of natural muslin from Joann's remnant bin. I used an upside-down salad bowl and an old washable orange marker to trace the center circle, but that was the only marking that I did.

The plumes of my wreath are so very wonky! In my mind, I can make a smooth evenly shaped curve, but when I am free motioning, the wiggles get me wonky. LOL! But my sister Suzanne loved it!

The small patterned pebbling took lots of time and thread but it was lots of fun. You kinda make lots of figure eights in differing sizes as you go.

I quilted in my signature and the date on this because I wanted this piece to be reversible with no label. I went very slowly when signing and had several stops and starts between some letters for clarity. It was just Connecting Threads Essential Threads with the Cornsilk as my needle thread and Taupe in the bobbin. The backside is a green/red/gold/rose check by Fabri-Quilt called Georgian Manor. It looks great with the turkey red binding. If I wasn't so stupid, I would've taken a picture of it, LOL!
Here is a bit of the same fabric where I used it in Jo Kramer's Chain of Faith quilt from Moda's Bake Shop. At least you can see it there because I had used the whole half-yard piece in the table runner with nary a scrap leftover to photograph.

 My sister made her gift to me, also! She is fabulous at flower arranginements and made me this Winter Market Basket piece to set outdoors by the front entrance to my house.

The basket contains several stones to weight the piece and anchor the greenery. It looks so festive!

We had fun at The Sunshine Club, too! Pauline had brought in her new hand-made kalidescope with the colored marbles that turn to create the designs.

She is sorting out the lights and darks of her new jelly rolls of all solids, while Sue is working on piecing her purple-on purple tumbler pattern quilt. A snow squall sprang up and I left right after lunch rather than stay for Bingo. That incident with the black ice has made me much more fearful about winter driving. Now I'm a winter wimp! LOL!

Stay calm and quilt on!

Hello, Darkness, My Old Friend...

Sheesh! Both of my overhead fluorescent tubes burnt out at once and all of a sudden, leaving me in the dark in my Quilting Cave.

I tried to do a few units of the chevrons on Step 2 of Celtic Solstice.
But I was doubly discouraged when I learned that I had goofed them up by sewing the two rectangles bass-ackwards!

Outdoors, there was snow and freezing rain, so the roads were terrible! No going out for light bulbs here.

The birds were loving the rebuilt feeder that Felix fixed for me last Christmas.

Not sure if these are a different type of chickadee, or maybe a nuthatch? Click to enlarge.

The male cardinal that I was trying to photograph for you was very shy and took off immediately as I peeked around the corner of the garage door, so I never got him on film.

I cheered and hugged Felix when he came home Tuesday with the new bulbs! Matthew put them in right away and I was back in business! Yeay! Take nothing for granted.

That nice bright yellow was that new Walmart fabric. I'm not usually a yellow person, so this is stretching my comfort zone, but I love the look!

Miss Raven loves to roll in the fresh snow and came in with white clumps of snow stuck to her head, LOL! Miss Emma Lynn just likes to zip around in it.

Stay calm and quilt on!

Cyber-loot

I just began cutting some yellows for the Celtic Solstice quilt Clue # 2 this morning and like the variety that ranges from bright buttercup to a soft pale buttercream. I'm definitely not keeping up, LOL! Here is the link.

I also ran some errands at Walmart yesterday before today's freezing rain. While I was there, I spotted a few good picks for Celtic Solstice and grabbed them. They were priced to sell at $2.50 a yard and I popped them into the washer as soon as I got home. Walmart has some good finds if you pick and choose!

I also indulged myself during cyber-week sales and those internet purchases have just begun to come rolling in. These were historical selections, mostly Marcus Brothers Tavern Collections that were reduced shipping and all cost less than $5 per yard from Thousands Of Bolts back in November. I  got 9 fabrics, but one red I bought two yards of, and my bill was under $55 so I feel that I did very well!

From Hancock's Of Paducah came a couple of Spice Chest Jo Morton's by Andover that I think were about $6 per yard.

I wanted to take some pre-cooked frozen meals to my friend Camille, whose hubby, Joe, is recovering from open heart surgery and so she is doing long commutes to the Massachusetts rehab hospital. Her shop is Evergreen Country Primitives, in Milton, New Hampshire, and she just got in the Nancy Gere First Ladies line from Windham.

Those reds are to die for and I also bought over a yard of the Blueberry Crumb Cake tan on tan vines from Moda.

Click on any picture to enlarge it for details.
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Tipper, the biggest male, dare I say "cat?" doesn't think that he is a 6 month old kitten. He thinks that he is a black Labrador. Seeing is believing!

The lady labs wonder why Tipper won't play with the soggy well-chewed tennis balls strewn about the yard, LOL!

All in all, a great day to stay in and sew!

Happy sewing.

Such Fun!

Two days, earlier this week, were consumed by doing the Red & White swap for Block_swappers. I confess that I was daunted by the size of this swap, but I just jumped in and swam with the crimson tide. Once I stopped worrying about it and just did it, it was fun to do it.

I always place the shipping envelope of the swapper down first, to mark "their" pile on my table. Then it's a game of going round dealing the blocks, one to a pile like a perfectly mad game of playing cards. After rechecking everything, I repackage them for shipping out.

Here's my tote loaded for the post office, surrounded by the old used shipping envelopes that had initially marked those spaces of the piles.

It sure did feel good to get the job completed! It is a heavy responsibility to be entrusted with eleven other ladies beautifully crafted workmanship. But if no one will do it, we don't get any swapping done, so I like to pitch in occasionally.
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The Suncook Valley Sun, our weekly local newspaper, told of a Christmas review that was to be held at the Pittsfield Scenic Theater. The tickets were free if you would just bring in food pantry items or coats for the Rotary Coat drive.
"The Bodacious Babes" was the name of the show and it sounded like great fun! I drove to Pittsfield, the next town south, with my food items and picked up the tickets the day before the show.

Remembering that my dear friend, Ilse, loves Jack's New York Style Pizza, which is just around the corner from the theater, I stopped in there, too.

In a flash, I had a small pizza to go ordered to take over to Ilse's house.

Her husband, Alfred won't eat pizza and my diabetic husband, Felix, shouldn't eat pizza! So we sat and enjoyed it ourselves, just two girlfriends.
When it came time to go to the show, Alfred was embroiled in an emergency plumbing project. He was busy repairing a leaking brand new toilet that he had installed a few days before, so only Ilse joined us.

Peg Johnson and Kat Murphy sang up a storm in true vaudeville style!

Those two ladies really belted out the songs; Christmas, pop, country, gospel and even a fine patriotic favorite of ours, "Proud to be an American." On that one, the whole audience stood up and joined in for it as the finale.
During the pre-show seating time, free coffee, cocoa with whipped cream, and homemade Christmas cookies were served.

This was our "cookie lady" and we gave a donation to her as well as buying $5 worth of raffle tickets on a white birch Yule log candlestick centerpiece.

It was a perfect evening topped off by an uneventful ride home despite all the dire warnings of freezing rain and slick driving conditions. Then we watched Grimm on TV and had big bowls of stovetop-cooked Orville Redenbacher's popcorn, sprayed liberally with butter spray and sprinkled with tons of grated Parmesian cheese.

Part 2, the second clue of the Bonnie K. Hunter mystery came out today, but I didn't get to read it until after The Sunshine Club met for yet another rainy Friday.

We all worked on our respective ongoing projects and drank decaf coffee with our chocolates. We really do make our own sunshine, LOL!

When I got home from lunch and Bingo, (I won two pots of $0.55 cents, wheeee!), I did manage to sew a few more of the orange and blue tri-recs units from Part I of the Bonnie K. Hunter mystery.

That means I'm up to forty all sewn, pressed, counted, and pinned into stacks of ten. Yeay!!!

On the way to The Sunshine Club, I was a bit late because I started to just drive past this as I hurried along. Then I realized that it would NOT be there by the time I was coming home hours later when I had more time. So I turned the car right around and went back to take these photos for you! If you click on them it will enlarge them.

View 1

This is beside Route 140 in Alton, New Hampshire, just across from their fire station. I think it is called Wentworth Pond, but it is an offshoot of the Merrymeeting River.

View 2

The air around me was cool but damp.

View 3

A little bittersweet (I think?) bush by the water's edge beckoned to be photographed also.

View 4

Enjoy beauty wherever you find it! Make time for it.

View 6

I have labeled these so that you may choose your favorite and tell me which you liked best and why. I love hearing from all of you!

Happy sewing!

Sewing Some TriRecs Blocks

So I loaded up some bobbins to get to work on the Bonnie K. Hunter mystery quilt, Celtic Solstice! Her page is here.

My first efforts were okay, but I had trouble finding my "sweet spot" on the 1/4" seams that overlap at the point of the TriRecs blocks. Here is a reject that I redid to avoid a chopped off point.

There were only a few bad ones.

I have about 50 done of the neutral and blue TriRecs and none of the orange ones yet.

It amazes me that lots of folks are all done with this step. Maybe I'm slow but I'm having fun with it and not rushing!

I also noticed that I prefer to put the left side on first rather than the right.

That little placement dohickey is pretty important as Bonnie had cautioned us!

This is very similar construction to those offsets on the tumblers that I sewed together for Amy's farewell quilt.

They aren't perfect but measure 3 1/2" and have a decent overlap at the top, so I'm very pleased!

And I got Matthew to take a picture of me in the scarf that I made yesterday.

Miss Raven and Miss Emma liked it, too!

Happy sewing!